Thursday, November 1, 2012

False Argument: Gun Ownership is Up Therefore Crime is Down

The number of violent crimes reported to police decreased 3.8 percent
last year to 1.2 million, the fifth straight year of declines, the FBI
announced Monday.

Meanwhile, the total number of property crimes reported to law
enforcement agencies went down by 0.5 percent to 9 million, the ninth
consecutive year that figure has fallen.

The FBI’s data showed that the South accounted for 41.3
percent of violent crime, while the West accounted for 22.9 percent. The
Midwest claimed 19.5 percent of the cases and the Northeast, 16.2
percent.

This is one of their fundamental misconceptions, the idea that more guns means less violence.

The proof of their fallacy is in the geographic breakdown. The South, which has a high concentration of gun ownership, accounts for 41% of the violent crime. The Northeast, which has a much lower concentration of gun ownership, accounts for only 16.2%.

16 comments:

This is an absurd argument that has been debunked before. There are many many factors that influence violent crime rates in a given area. One of the chief among them is socioeconomic status. And while gun ownership is up all over the county, the relative socioeconomic patterns around the country have not drastically changed.

So, overall violent crime is down and much of that can be contributed to the rise in gun-ownership. But relative crime rates are still greater in many areas of the south and inner-cities because people in these areas are still poor. Get it?

Mike, you love analogies so much … here is another one for you:

I am certain that the rates of floaty ownership are much higher in the south in general and especially higher in coastal areas. And, I would be willing to bet that the rates of drowning are also much much higher in these same areas. By your logic, it would be perfectly logical to assume that floaties, rather than preventing drowning deaths, actually contribute to them.

No no no. The difference is that in one case we are talking about static crime rates while in the other we are looking at crime rate deltas. You can glean so much more information by looking at changes than you can static differences.

Your report compares static crime rates across different areas in the US. But those areas already have very complex pre-existing demographics. It is *extremely* difficult tease apart the influences of those varying demographics.

But, when crime rates are shown to drop (or rise) over a given period of time - it becomes possible (still difficult - but easier) to investigate to see what factors lead to the change.

Crime rates have dropped in the US nearly universally as restrictions on guns have eased - regardless of whether the area had relatively low or high rates compared to the rest of the country. That is very telling.

Gun-grabbers like to point to the UK because, compared to the US, they used to have lower crime rates. But that type of static comparison fails to take cultural differences into account and so is almost useless in determining the true impact of gun-control measures.

But, if you look at what happens to violent crime rates in a given area after changes in gun-control laws, you can start to see the true impact. In the US, crime rates have fallen everywhere that restrictions have eased. But in the UK, violent crime has skyrocketed as restrictions have tightened.

Actually Frail's argument is all confused. He says "Crime rates have dropped in the US nearly universally as restrictions on guns have eased - regardless of whether the area had relatively low or high rates compared to the rest of the country. That is very telling."

Actually Frail gun ownership has fallen steadily since the 1980s that could easily account for the drop in violent crime!

And the top ten states with the least restrictive gun laws still have less gun crime than the top ten states with the most restrictive gun laws. In the states with the least restrictive gun laws, guns are used in robberies 22% LESS, 28% LESS in aggravated assaults and 16.70% LESS in homicides than the states with the most restrictive gun laws. source

Furthermore, the states with the least restrictive gun laws have a 28.72% LOWER Violent Crime Rate and a 33.50% LOWER Murder Rate than the states with the most restrictive gun laws. source

Your contention has always been that more guns lead to more crime. Now we have proof that there are more guns and there is less crime. Ergo, your claim of a causative link between guns and crime is bullshit.

I haven't seen anyone claim that this report proves that more guns cause less crime. There are much stronger pieces of evidence proving that claim than this report does (Kansas City's changing Gun laws and Crime rates, for one*).

*The city is split across 2 states. One state tightened gun laws, the other did not. The part of the city with stricter gun laws saw an increase in crime. The other part of the city saw a decrease in crime.

Dan, I'm afraid you're the one missing the point, and I suspect on purpose. If guns were the only factor in violent crime, then what you said would work. In other words, if it weren't for the gun availability having increased, the crime rate would have gone down 6% or maybe even 10%.

Mikeb, you're guessing again without facts. I could guess that without gun availability, the crime rate would have gone up. That guess is no less reasonable than yours. The facts are that gun ownership and carry has gone up, while violent crime has gone down. Under your narrative, that shouldn't be possible.

While you can't say that crime is down BECAUSE of an increase in gun ownership, you can say that the increase in gun ownership did NOT correspond with an increase in homicides. More liberal gun laws have not loosed the "rivers of blood" the gun control crowd is so fond of predicting.

The data show a negative correlation between the combination of looser gun laws and increased gun ownership on one hand and violent crime on the other. More guns and better laws have come along with less violence. If guns, by themselves, are evil, that shouldn't be possible.

What the evidence does show is that there's no need for radical measures to control guns. What we're doing right now is working fine.

While I don't think the inference can be made that more guns leads to less crime, there is one thing that is absolutely crystal clear. More guns do not lead to more crime like all of the anti-gun cultists have been bleating about. The stats absolutely do not reflect this. You were 100% dead wrong on this one Mike.

But crime rates aren't going up. That's the point. If you were correct, the increase in gun ownership and in carry outside the home would have resulted in an increase in violent crime. But that hasn't happened.

My reading of the data says that gun ownership is independent of the crime rate. Crime goes up or down based on economic and other sociological factors. One of my reasons for being a gun owner is to protect myself from potential crimes that would happen to me. That's not my only reason, but the idea here is that I don't want to find myself on the bad end of statistics, no matter how much improvement we see.